Dr. Henry “Skip”
Louis Gates, Jr., is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor
and the director of the
W.E.B. Du
Bois Institute for African and African American Research at
Harvard University. He is editor in chief of the Oxford African American
Studies Center and of the daily online magazine The Root. He has
received more than forty honorary degrees from institutions the world
over.

He is also general editor of the The Norton Anthology of African
American Literature, co-editor of Transition magazine, a staff
writer for The New Yorker and the author of essays, reviews and profiles in other
magazines, scholarly periodicals and newspapers.

Honors granted to him include the
Zora Neale Hurston Society Award for Cultural
Scholarship, the Norman Rabb Award of the American Jewish Committee, the George Polk Award
for Social Commentary and the Tikkun National Ethics Award. He has been a Mellon Fellow at
Cambridge and the National Humanities Center, a Ford Foundation National Fellow and a
MacArthur Prize Fellow.

Who are we, and where do we come from? The fundamental drive to answer
these questions is at the heart of
Finding Your Roots, the companion book to the PBS documentary series
seen by 30 million people. As Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. shows
us, the tools of cutting-edge genomics and deep genealogical research now
allow us to learn more about our roots, looking further back in time than
ever before. Gates's investigations take on the personal and genealogical
histories of more than twenty luminaries, including United States
Congressman John Lewis, actor Robert Downey Jr., CNN medical correspondent
Sanjay Gupta, President of the "Becoming American Institute" Linda Chavez,
and comedian Margaret Cho. Interwoven with their moving stories of
immigration, assimilation, strife, and success, Gates provides practical
information for amateur genealogists just beginning archival research on
their own families' roots, and he details the advances in genetic research
now available to the public. The result is an illuminating exploration of
who we are, how we lost track of our roots, and how we can find them again.

The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross is the companion book to
the six-part, six hour documentary of the same name, airing on national,
primetime public television in the fall of 2013. The series is the first
to air since 1968 that chronicles the full sweep of 500 years of African
American history, from the origins of slavery on the African continent
and the arrival of the first black conquistador, Juan Garrido, in
Florida in 1513, through five centuries of remarkable historic events
right up to today—when Barack Obama is serving his second term as
President, yet our country remains deeply divided by race and class.

The book explores these topics in even more detail than possible in the
television series, and examines many other fascinating matters as well,
such as the ethnic origins—and the regional and cultural diversity—of
the Africans whose enslavement led to the creation of the African
American people. It delves into the multiplicity of cultural
institutions, political strategies, and religious and social
perspectives that African Americans have created in the half a
millennium since their African ancestors first arrived on these shores.
Like the television series, this book guides readers on an engaging
journey through the Black Atlantic world—from Africa and Europe to the
Caribbean, Latin America, and the United States—to shed new light on
what it has meant, and means, to be an African American.

By highlighting the complex internal debates and class differences
within the Black Experience in this country, readers will learn that the
African American community, which black abolitionist Martin R. Delany
described as a “nation within a nation,” has never been a truly uniform
entity, and that its members have been debating their differences of
opinion and belief from their very first days in this country. The road
to freedom for black people in America has not been linear; rather, much
like the course of a river, it has been full of loops and eddies,
slowing and occasionally reversing current. Ultimately, this book
emphasizes the idea that African American history encompasses multiple
continents and venues, and must be viewed through a transnational
perspective to be fully understood.

Educator, writer, critic, intellectual, film-maker—Henry Louis Gates,
Jr., has been widely praised as being one of America’s most prominent
and prolific scholars. In what will be an essential volume, The Henry
Louis Gates Reader collects three decades of writings from his many
fields of interest and expertise.

From his earliest work of literary-historical excavation in 1982,
through his current writings on the history and science of African
American genealogy, the essays collected here follow his path as
historian, theorist, canon-builder, and cultural critic, revealing a
thinker of uncommon breadth whose work is uniformly guided by the drive
to uncover and restore a history that has for too long been buried and
denied.

An invaluable reference, The Henry Louis Gates Reader will be a singular
reflection of one of our most gifted minds.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., gives us a sumptuously illustrated landmark book
tracing African American history from the arrival of the conquistadors
to the election of Barack Obama.

Informed by the latest, sometimes provocative scholarship and including
more than seven hundred images—ancient maps, fine art, documents,
photographs, cartoons, posters—Life Upon These Shores focuses on
defining events, debates, and controversies, as well as the signal
achievements of people famous and obscure. Gates takes us from the
sixteenth century through the ordeal of slavery, from the Civil War and
Reconstruction through the Jim Crow era and the Great Migration; from
the civil rights and black nationalist movements through the age of
hip-hop to the Joshua generation. By documenting and illuminating the
sheer diversity of African American involvement in American history,
society, politics, and culture, Gates bracingly disabuses us of the
presumption of a single “black experience.”

Life Upon These Shores is a book of major importance, a breathtaking
tour de force of the historical imagination

From Publisher's Weekly:
In a warm, gracefully written, moving
autobiographical reminiscence, Gates, chairman of Harvard's
Afro-American Studies department, recalls growing up in the 1950s and
'60s in Piedmont, W.Va., an immigrant working-class town where the only
work available to blacks at the local paper mill was loading trucks.
Devastated at age 12 by the onset of his mother's depressive disorder,
Gates joined a Baptist church and desperately pursued a ``restrictive
fundamentalism.'' While avidly embracing ``black power'' in the
mid-1960s, he yearned for approval from his father, who was ``hard on
colored people.'' This engrossing narrative of Gates's intellectual,
political, sexual and emotional awakening is studded with memorable
incidents such as his discovery that his mother, years before he was
born in 1950, led a pioneering civil rights march (40,000 first
printing)

Unlike most white Americans who, if they are so inclined, can search
their ancestral records, identifying who among their forebears was the first
to set foot on this country's shores, most African Americans, in tracing
their family's past, encounter a series of daunting obstacles. Slavery was a
brutally efficient nullifier of identity, willfully denying black men and
women even their names. Yet, from that legacy of slavery, there have sprung
generations who've struggled, thrived, and lived extraordinary lives.

For too long, African Americans' family trees have been barren of branches,
but, very recently, advanced genetic testing techniques, combined with
archival research, have begun to fill in the gaps. Here, scholar Henry Louis
Gates, Jr., backed by an elite team of geneticists and researchers, takes
nineteen extraordinary African Americans on a once unimaginable journey,
tracing family sagas through U.S. history and back to Africa.

More than a work of history, In Search of Our Roots is a book of
revelatory importance that, for the first time, brings to light the lives of
ordinary men and women who, by courageous example, blazed a path for their
famous descendants. For a reader, there is the stirring pleasure of
witnessing long-forgotten struggles and triumphs'but there's an enduring
reward as well. In accompanying the nineteen contemporary achievers on their
journey into the past and meeting their remarkable forebears, we come to
know ourselves.

Generations of
Americans have debated the meaning of Abraham Lincoln's views on race
and slavery. He issued the Emancipation Proclamation, authorized the use
of black troops during the Civil War, supported a constitutional
amendment to outlaw slavery, and eventually advocated giving the vote to
black veterans and to what he referred to as "very intelligent negroes."
But he also harbored grave doubts about the intellectual capacity of
African Americans, publicly used the n-word until at least 1862, enjoyed
"darky" jokes and black-faced minstrel shows, and long favored permanent
racial segregation and the voluntary "colonization" of freed slaves in
Africa, the Caribbean, or South America. In this book--the first
complete collection of Lincoln's important writings on both race and
slavery--readers can explore these contradictions through Lincoln's own
words. Acclaimed Harvard scholar and documentary filmmaker Henry Louis
Gates, Jr., presents the full range of Lincoln's views, gathered from
his private letters, speeches, official documents, and even race jokes,
arranged chronologically from the late 1830s to the 1860s.

Complete with definitive texts, rich historical notes, and Gates's
original introduction, this book charts the progress of a war within
Lincoln himself. We witness his struggles with conflicting aims and
ideas--a hatred of slavery and a belief in the political equality of all
men, but also anti-black prejudices and a determination to preserve the
Union even at the cost of preserving slavery. We also watch the
evolution of his racial views, especially in reaction to the heroic
fighting of black Union troops.

At turns inspiring and disturbing, Lincoln on Race and Slavery is
indispensable for understanding what Lincoln's views meant for his
generation--and what they mean for our own.

Finding Oprah's Roots will not only endow readers with a new appreciation for
the key contributions made by history's unsung but also equip them with the
tools to connect to pivotal figures in their own past. A roadmap through the
intricacies of public documents and online databases, the book also highlights
genetic testing resources that can make it possible to know one's distant tribal
roots in Africa.

For Oprah, the path back to the past was emotion-filled and profoundly
illuminating, connecting the narrative of her family to the larger American
narrative and 'anchoring' her in a way not previously possible. For the reader,
Finding Oprah's Roots offers the possibility of an equally rewarding experience.

"Henry Louis Gates, Jr., examines the surprising social and economic journey
African Americans have made. Using the interviews he conducted for his PBS
series, Professor Gates portrays a community united by shared memory and a
strong, vibrant culture, yet divided by wealth and lack of opportunity - a
people still struggling to ensure true equality for all." Professor Gates
traveled across the country interviewing forty-four famous and not-so-famous
individuals from parts of the African-American community - the "Black Elite,"
"The New South," "Chicago's South Side," and "Black Hollywood." In their own
words, each discusses what it means to be African American in the twenty-first
century: from Maya Angelou and Morgan Freeman's reflections on "returning home"
to the South...to convict "Eric Edwards" telling us how his peers find
self-sufficiency and prove their adulthood...from an interracial couple
describing how they cope with the remnants of racism in Birmingham to a single
mother's insights into how life on Chicago's newly renovated South Side still
presents its own particular obstacles and dangers.

An unprecedented historical and literary event, this tale written in the
1850s is the only known novel by a female African American slave, and quite
possibly the first novel written by a black woman anywhere. A work
recently uncovered by renowned scholar Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., it
is a stirring, page-turning story of "passing" and the adventures of a young
slave as she makes her way to freedom.

When Professor Gates saw that modest listing in an auction catalogue for
African American artifacts, he immediately knew he could be on the verge of
a major discovery. After exhaustively researching the hand-written
manuscript's authenticity, he found that his instincts were right. He had
purchased a genuine autobiographical novel by a female slave who called
herself ' and her story's main character ' Hannah Crafts.

Presented here unaltered and under its author's original title, The
Bondwoman's Narrative tells of a self-educated young house slave who knows
her life is limited by the brutalities of her society, but never suspects
that the freedom of her plantation's beautiful new mistress is also at
risk...or that a devastating secret will force them both to flee from slave
hunters with another powerful, determined enemy at their heels. Together
with Professor Gates' brilliant introduction ' which includes the story of
his search for the real Hannah Crafts, the biographical facts that laid the
groundwork for her novel, and a fascinating look at other slave narratives
of the time ' The Bondwoman's Narrative offers a unique and unforgettable
reading experience. In it, a voice that has never been heard rings out, and
an undiscovered story at the heart of the American experience is finally
told.

Inspired by the dream of the late African American scholar W. E. B. Du
Bois and assisted by an eminent advisory board led by Nigerian Nobel
Laureate Wole Soyinka, Harvard professors Kwame Anthony Appiah, and Henry
Louis Gates, Jr. have created the first scholarly encyclopedia that takes as
its scope the entire history of Africa and the African Diaspora.

A landmark in reference publishing, Africana is an incomparable
one-volume encyclopedia of the black world - a vital resource for families,
students, and educators everywhere.. "With entries ranging from "affirmative
action" to "zydeco," Africana includes articles on the history of each
African nation and every major cultural, religious, and political movement
in Africa and the New World. Here you will find entries on the most
prominent ethnic groups in Africa and the lives of every African and African
American Nobel Laureate as well as each member of the U. S. Congressional
Black Caucus. In more than three thousand articles Africana brings the
entire black world into sharp focus.

This landmark anthology includes the work of 120 writers over two
centuries, from the earliest known work by an African American, Lucy Terry's
poem "Bars Fight, " to the fiction of the Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison and
the poems of the U.S. Poet Laureate, Rita Dove.

In a ground-breaking collaboration, and taking the great W. E. B. Du Bois as
their model, two of our foremost African-American intellectuals address the
dreams, fears, aspirations, and responsibilities of the black community -
especially the black elite - on the eve of the twenty-first century. In 1903,
the influential historian, editor, and co-founder of the NAACP, W. E. B. Du
Bois, published his now famous essay "The Talented Tenth." "The Negro race," it
began, "like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men." For the
young post-Civil Rights era group of leaders, of which Henry Louis Gates, Jr.,
and Cornel West have become such a significant part, "The Talented Tenth" was
held up as a model for the social, political, and ethical roles of the new
"crossover" generation. Du Bois's belief in an educated class dedicated to
reform became their inspiration and their credo. Now, nearly a century after Du
Bois set forth the role of the educated black American, Gates and West explore
this pivotal aspect of his intellectual legacy - and, in so doing, they not only
re-examine Du Bois's ideas on leadership but also respond to the challenges of
the present. The problems are clear and urgent. Since the day Martin Luther
King, Jr., died, the black middle class has quadrupled. Yet, simultaneously, the
size of the black underclass has disproportionately and tragically skyrocketed.

What does it mean to be black and
male in 20th-century America? The notion of the unitary "black man" is as
illusory as the creature conjured up by Wallace Stevens in his poem "Thirteen Ways of
Looking at a Blackbird", says Gates. With these eight essays--most of which appeared
originally in "The New Yorker"--the chair of Harvard's Afro-American Studies
department takes a close look at some of the most extraordinary figures of our time.

From David Castronovo, The Economist:
David Castronovo, The Economist:
{These essays} attempt
to make a case for black studies that is based on the author's version of black cultural
nationalism. In this it fails. As another black academic, Shelby Steele, has pointed out,
there is no good reason to set apart for study works by or about blacks as long as they
are not excluded from the regular curriculum. To do so is to reimpose segregation in
higher education. The very idea of black studies implies jobs reserved for blacks. Thus
black cultural nationalism creates a special status for Mr Gates and other black academics
sharing his belief that, for instance, the formal complexityof 'black slave narratives'
have been highly underrated on account of prejudice. Those who disagree tend to be
dismissed as ignorant or racist or both.Copyright 1983 The H.W. Wilson Company. All rights reserved.

Eclectic, exciting,
convincing, provocative, challenging even when he's not altogether convincing, Mr. Gates
gives black literature room to breathe, invents interpretive frameworks that enable us to
experience black writing rather than label it in terms of theme or ideology. From this
perspective his bookis a generous long-awaited gift. . . . One goal of Mr. Gates's book is
to illuminate the power of black vernacular tradition, its consciousness of itself at
extremely complex, sophisticated levels. Is it necessary or appropriate that the language
of that book be foreign to the majority of the tradition's carriers? What's being lost and
gained? Maybe the best news about 'The Signifying Monkey' is its willingness to struggle
with such issues. Like great novels that force us to view the world differently, Mr.
Gates's compelling study suggests new ways of seeing. 'John Wideman, The New York Times Book Review:

For over two centuries, critics and the black community have tended
to approach African-American literature as simply one more front in the
important war against racism, valuing slave narratives and
twentieth-century works alike, primarily for their political impact. In
this volume, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a leading scholar in
African-American studies, attacks the notion of African-American
literature as a kind of social realism. Insisting, instead, that critics
focus on the most repressed element of African-American criticism--the
language of the text--Gates advocates the use of a close, methodical
analysis of language, made possible by modern literary theory.
Throughout his study, Gates incorporates the theoretical insights of
critics such as Bakhtin, Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, and Bloom, as he
examines the modes of representation that define black art and analyzes
the unspoken assumptions made in judging this literature since its
inception. Ranging from the eighteenth-century poet, Phillis Wheatley,
to modern writers, Ishmael Reed and Alice Walker, Gates seeks to
redefine literary criticism itself, moving away from a Eurocentric
notion of a hierarchical canon--mostly white, Western, and male--to
foster a truly comparative and pluralistic notion of literature.